


Crabs in the Sand

by Lobelia321



Series: Arthropods [1]
Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:12:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lobelia321/pseuds/Lobelia321
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sun is hot.  The sand is hot.  Karl is hot.  Dominic is hot, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crabs in the Sand

**Author's Note:**

> An experiment with style. Thanks to Jen, Tamaranth and Demelza who have blazed the path. And special thanks to Brenda who was responsible for this plot bunny and this pairing, *mwah*.

Crabs in the Sand

Title: Crabs in the Sand

Series: Arthropods

Part: 1/1

Author: Lobelia <lobelia40@yahoo.com>

Website: http://blithesea.net/lobelia/

Pairing: Dominic Monaghan / Karl Urban

Rating: G (yep, folks, it's taken me 6 months to work myself up to a G)

Summary: The sun is hot. The sand is hot. Karl is hot. Dominic is hot, too.

Feedback: Yes, please, I would love feedback! Anything, even if it's only one line, one word!

Content/Warnings: RPS

Archive Rights: Beyond the Fellowship. My niche. Anyone else, please just ask.

Disclaimers: This is a work of amateur fiction. I do not know these people. I am not making money. The events described in this story did not happen.

Author's Notes: An experiment with style. Thanks to Jen, Tamaranth and Demelza who have blazed the path. And special thanks to Brenda who was responsible for this plot bunny and this pairing, *mwah*.

\---------------

Dominic sits in the sand. He looks at his hand. A thousand tiny crabs are crawling across the hand. His hand is in the sand. It is partially covered by sand and wholly covered by crabs. They are translucent crabs. They are minuscule minute microscopic crabs. They are crabs of the islands of New Zealand. Maybe they live beneath the sand. Maybe they have tunnels and castles and shopping malls beneath the sand of this beach. At this moment, they are on Dominic's hand.

"Look," says Dominic. Karl looks.

"Look at my crabs," says Dominic. Karl looks at Dominic's crabs.

If the crabs were large, we would be hearing their claws clank against one another. We would be hearing the rustling of their leg joints. We would be revolted and at the same time fascinated by their arthropodic jointedness. But the crabs aren't large. They are no larger than lice.

"Aren't they itchy?" says Karl.

Dominic pulls his hand out of the sand. Thousands of tiny grains of sand flow off the hand. Hundreds of tiny translucent crabs fall with the sand. Dominic shakes his hand and crabs fly everywhere in a cloud of crab dust. About two dozen crabs continue clinging on.

"Hey, what are you doing?" yells Karl.

Dominic has pulled Karl's shorts away by the elastic. He has opened a small space between Karl's shorts and Karl's back. He shakes his hand into the space. When he takes his hand out, the crabs are gone.

"Get off!" yells Karl.

Dominic gets up and runs for it. Sand flies upwards in arcs from where his feet have landed. He runs but he can't run very fast. He can't run very fast because he's laughing too hard.

Karl runs after Dominic. But Karl can't run very fast, either. He can't run fast because he, too, is laughing. He also can't run fast because he is hopping from side to side. He's hopping and wiggling his hips and sticking his hand down his shorts.

"Got crabs, mate?" shouts Dominic from a safe distance.

Karl doesn't deign to answer.

Dominic comes a bit closer. "People will start to talk," he says. He grins. Karl pulls his hand out of his shorts.

"Can't get these little buggers out," Karl says. "They're itchy as hell, too."

"Have a swim," suggests Dominic.

"Can I borrow your bathers?"

"Yes."

"Okay, where are they?" Karl looks around.

"On me, mate," says Dominic.

"Well, get 'em off. You owe me."

Dominic starts to pull off his shorts but Karl lunges at him. Karl pulls Dominic's hand away, the hand that was pulling off the shorts. Dominic grins.

"Are you trying to get us arrested?" says Karl. "Do it behind a towel."

"We can go to the nudie section."

"Miles away. And full of even more crabs."

"I like them."

Karl just snorts. Dominic walks over to his towel. His towel is large and has vertical pink and white stripes on it. It looks like an ad for yoghurt. Dominic shakes the towel and more tiny crabs float towards the sand.

"You're near a nest," says Karl.

"Rubbish. They don't come in nests."

"What do they come in then?"

Dominic squints into the sun. He hasn't got his sunglasses on. "I don't know," he says. "I'll look it up. But it's not nests. Ants come in nests. Birds come in nests. Wasps..."

"I get the point. Take off your togs."

Dominic starts humming a strip-tease tune. He rubs his palms over his belly. He licks his lips. He rolls his hips. Karl rolls his eyes.

"I haven't got anything else to put on," says Dominic. "I came in these."

Karl puts out his hand.

Dominic drapes the pink-and-white towel around his hips. He takes off his bathers. He hands them to Karl. Now what? Dominic only has one towel. He's not about to take it off.

Karl looks left. Karl looks right. To the left, there is an elderly man. He is lying on his towel (which is not pink-and-white striped but navy blue with tassels). He has grey curly hair on his chest. He has a hat on his face. To the right, there is a family. Small children mill about. A man with a Pink-Panther T-shirt says, "Stop that, Nathan!" A woman in a one-piece is distributing sweets from a plastic bag.

Karl whips off his shorts and whips on Dominic's trunks. Dominic is impressed. He is impressed both by the speed of Karl's manoeuvre and by the shapeliness of Karl's bum. He didn't get a look at Karl's genitals. Karl was facing towards the grey-chested man.

Dominic's trunks are slightly too short and slightly too tight for Karl. Karl tugs and adjusts. Dominic feels the breeze on his balls, underneath his towel.

"I'll need that towel to dry off when I get back," says Karl. He's off, walking slowly down towards the water. Slow and stately.

Dominic shakes out Karl's shorts. One lone crab flutters to the ground. He puts on Karl's shorts. They are a bit too baggy for him. They are low-slung on his hips. Karl wasn't wearing anything underneath them. His balls must have chafed against the fabric. Dominic's balls swing loose because the shorts are too big.

Dominic lies down on his back in the sand on the towel. The sand is hot. The sand is grainy. The towel is tufty. Dominic shuts his eyes and looks at the sun through his eyelids. The sun is orange. Although that could be the blood in his eyelids. Dominic listens to the beach. The beach sounds like children and dogs and kites and big umbrellas with logos on and splashings and plashings and thundering surf and mile-high gulls and mile-away creakings of masts on sailboats and blue of sky and orange of sun. Dominic smells the beach. The beach smells of sun oil and sand. It smells of skin and vanilla ice cream.

Dominic has a dream. He turns his head and sees a giant crab. The crab is translucent so that he can see the family with the toddlers and the dad and the mum and the plastic bag through its big, crustacean head. The crab waves its antlers. No, not antlers, they are claws. They don't have antlers, and they don't live in nests. The crab says, "Give me your towel." The crab waves its claws and drips water on Dominic's chest.

Dominic opens his eyes. "Hello, Karl," he says. "I dreamt you were a crab."

Karl makes crab-hands and a crab-face. He bends and tugs the towel from underneath Dominic. The drips from Karl's body leave small round dark pennies on the sand. Dominic collects the pennies in his palm.

"Why did you come to the beach without trunks, anyway?" asks Dominic.

"Not telling," says Karl and closes his eyes.

Dominic looks at Karl. He looks at Karl's closed eyes. He looks at Karl's eyelashes, attached to his closed eyes, and he looks at Karl's eyebrows, forming arches above Karl's closed eyes. He looks at Karl's cheekbones, just below Karl's closed eyes, and at Karl's earlobe and the jutty-out bit of cartilage between Karl's cheek and Karl's inner ear. He blows on Karl's inner ear. Karl flinches. He blows on Karl's chest. No response. He blows on Karl's cheekbones. No response.

Karl's belly goes up and down, up and down. Karl is breathing in the correct yogic way. Children breathe like that, and Karl asleep does, too.

Dominic piles the sand pennies on Karl's belly and watches them going up and down, up and down.

Dominic watches the water drying on Karl's skin. The water on Karl's skin comes in the form of small globules. The globules wobble on Karl's belly. They reflect and refract the sun's light. They will burn Karl's skin. They will refract the sun's fire and make Karl's skin curl up into red crispy flakes. Ultraviolet rays will incinerate the epidermis. Electromagnetic waves will combust Karl's epithelium, his belly and cheeks and tender smooth chest.

Dominic stretches. His fingertips touch his plastic bag and he tugs it towards him. The bag rustles, in that way that plastic bags do. Dominic finds the sun lotion. It is in a yellow plastic bottle with a brown ribbed lid. The lotion itself is beige. Dominic squeezes lotion onto Karl's chest. No response. He squeezes lotion onto Karl's belly, next to the pennies. No response. Karl's nose. Karl's cheeks.

Dominic uses his fingertips to smooth the lotion in. He smooths it into Karl's nose. Karl's nose feels hot. Karl's cheeks feel hot, too. The sun is hot. The sand is hot. Karl is hot. Dominic is hot, too.

For Karl's chest, Dominic uses the balls of his palm. One circle clockwise, next circle counter-clockwise. Smoothing in the lotion. The lotion smells of itself. There are no special smell additives. It's just that special sun lotion smell. It bottles up all the memories of all the beaches in the world. All the memories are smoothed into Karl's chest. Clockwise, counter-clockwise.

The blob on Karl's belly is still in blob form. Dominic hasn't smoothed it yet. He dips his index finger into the blob. It's melting by now. Dominic didn't know that sun lotion could melt. It's melting like vanilla ice cream. If the lotion were vanilla ice cream, Dominic could eat it off Karl's belly. He shouldn't eat the lotion, though. The last time he ate lotion was when he was three years old.

Dominic smooths the lotion into Karl's belly. Clockwise, counter-clockwise. In a stonehenge around the sand pennies. Karl's belly feels like a canvas tarpaulin stretched between two masts. In the middle of Karl's belly is Karl's belly button. Dominic blows on the belly button but he doesn't smooth lotion inside it. The belly button dips in and has two tiny whorls and a knot in the middle. It is different from Dominic's belly button. Different midwives cut the cord. Different bits of umbilical healed over at a different pace.

Below Karl's belly button is the waistband of Dominic's bathing trunks. It's cutting into Karl's waist. Dominic pulls it down a tiny bit. There are red vertical marks on Karl's skin where Dominic's waistband has pinched him.

Dominic doesn't smooth lotion into the marks. He doesn't blow on them, either.

When he looks up, Karl's eyes are open.

\---------------------

16 July 2002 

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